The Fog of Coronavirus: No Bright Lines

An adaptive mind-set for coping with COVID risk (+ adaptive updates at end)

At least six feet apart? More or less? The problem is that no bright lines bound a fog! Generals speak of “the fog of war” – we are at war with a virus that literally is a fog.

People like simple rules.  “Stay six feet apart.”  Bright enough, but do I really have to? Is it really enough? Oh, that is if it lasts more than fifteen minutes?  Inside or outside?  Downwind?  Talking or singing?  Loudly?  Emerging research summarized in MIT Tech Review and recently endorsed by the WHO shows this is far more complex and unpredictable than the six foot rule suggests.  Do masks really help?  When?  Do schools and offices reopen?  How?  Again, the answers seem to be “it depends, and our advice may change.”  Individuals and businesses need to be smart about this at all times.

Humans have been bred to be good at the complex calculus of throwing a spear or jumping a crevice, but we have less inbred ability to think about problems without immediate feedback -- like the spread of a virus.

Epidemiologists offer simple rules with bright lines.  But those are gross simplifications.  Apply them simplistically at your peril – and the peril of those around you.  I am no epidemiologist, but was educated in the science of decision making under risk and uncertainty and of optimizing in the real world.  We must all do that science as best we can.  When hunting for game or playing ball, simple rules about where to look, run, and aim are just the start – we layer on a rich intuitive calculus incorporating all we know about the task and its dynamics. Unfortunately, few of us learn even the basics of the dynamics contagion (and the science is still emerging). 

Here are some suggestions on structuring our thinking.  But this above all:  use good judgement all the time, every time, and try to make it both informed and thoughtful, with situational awareness to the current context.  This applies to individuals and groups, including businesses, schools, and other organizations.

It floats though the air with the greatest of ease…

It seems the coronavirus is transmitted primarily (but not only) as an aerosol or droplets that can be inhaled or touched -- directly or indirectly, and that even those without symptoms can transmit infection.  The aerosol seems most pervasive and significant, although droplets and indirect contact remain a concern.  So we need to consider not only what we touch and where we cough or sneeze, but how we might inhale the aerosol.  It seems that aerosol can float far more than 6 feet, and longer than 15 minutes.

Also, it seems “the dose makes the poison.” One might expect a single virus particle to be enough to cause contagion, but apparently it takes some quantity over time to overpower our immune system.  The more exposure the greater risk.  That is a complex and uncertain function of distance, time, and the number of exposures (and also depends on how healthy your immune system is).  Familiarity breeds viruses.

An analysis in Science (worth careful reading) shows how fuzzy this aerosol is -- significant amounts of coronavirus can travel much more than six feet under common conditions. An aerosol is literally a fog. Try putting a bright line around that! Ideally, we should consider the fluid dynamics of the air we are in. How much aerosol or droplets of what sizes? What level of exhalation? What airflow from a carrier to us.  How much get through a mask?  Studies of contagion airflow in a Wuhan restaurant and from runners show how tricky this can be.

Risk is complex and uncertain

Even experts find this interplay daunting. Tom Frieden, former CDC head, said (about broader issues), “People keep asking me, ‘What’s the one thing we have to do?’ The one thing we have to do is to understand that there is not one thing.”  It seems we must constantly do our own calculus in each situation as it emerges.  We must consider the nature of the game and the current conditions and intuit the dynamics (and aerodynamics) -- just as when we hunt or play ball.

Furthermore, we need to understand the basics of probability. People argue “going to a bar is no worse than going to a supermarket.”  Wrong on two levels. First, the exposure in a bar is likely closer and longer. More importantly, even if the risk was equal, it is how often you take risks that determines total risk. You can play Russian roulette once or twice and likely survive. Ten or twenty times and you will almost certainly die.  We must weigh level of risk, duration, and frequency.

Authorities like the CDC should be teaching us these underlying principles, so we can do our own calculus in each context.  But it is on each of us to read widely, apply critical thinking to weed out the junk, and use practical guides like the posts of immunologist Erin Bromage or similar coverage in general or business publications.

“In this together” – we are our brother’s keeper

Equally important, we need to help others to do likewise.  Covid-19 presents a life or death problem of optimizing individual risk and, as social creatures who infect one another, that requires optimizing collective risk.  We have an ongoing collective responsibility for being informed and thoughtful not just about our own risk, but our risk to others. 

We need to think about the social bubbles of those we will take the risk of being close to much of the time.  Within a few small, carefully controlled bubbles we might not wear masks, just as within family units.  But is now seem clear that we need to wear masks whenever anywhere near others not in our bubble.  We need to get everyone to understand that is not just so much for our own safety, but for that of others.  This is not a question of individual freedom, but of our responsibility as members of society (just as we do not drive drunk on public streets, even if we are a free-spirited daredevil).

At the macro level of groups, we have similar fuzziness that depends on the current context and dynamics.  We are realizing that we must go beyond simple on/off rules.  “Hybrid” models are emerging.  Not only must such models be carefully phased in depending on current conditions, they must remain adaptive to tightening or loosening in response to changing conditions. 

Agility in risk management

Soldiers navigate the fog of war with a continuous OODA loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act).  Individuals and businesses should seek to do the same, and instill this in all of their family, team, or community.  Systematization is an essential tool, but understand its limits.  Every business should have an ongoing program of guidance and education for applying OODA loops as long as the virus is not fully controlled.

We are developing metric scorecards and prediction models to assess the risk of social spreading in each locale, but our understanding of the science is evolving.  Making this even more complex, recent evidence suggests the virus has been mutating faster than first thought, so any rules that make sense today might not be so good next week.

There is huge pressure to relax these annoying constraints when conditions permit – but we must apply a carefully considered gradient -- not just a simple, binary risk-on/risk-off cycle -- in our vigilance level.  To do that all of us need to track the key indicators to know when risk of community spread is high or low.  And because our knowledge and the virus are evolving, we all, at each level, must also apply an OODA loop to the basic principles of our strategy – evolving that as we learn more. OODA applies at all levels -- to our everyday activity, our basic tactics, and our broad strategy. Don't get stuck "fighting the last war."

Good leaders will try their best to help all of us to “be smart.”  Smart businesses will care about their customers, employees, and reputations.  That may warrant empowering a “chief health officer.”  Entrepreneurs will seek opportunities to help in those efforts (and profit from that).  We are bound as humans by a social contract to be careful for one another.  Like it or not, we are truly in this together.  Institutional dysfunction leads to health dysfunction.  We need effective government and institutions that foster social trust.  The US has that in some locales, but overall, it is tragically lacking (as the WSJ reports).

We are all living in an era of unusual personal risk – each of us must be smart and situationally aware about managing the risks we take for ourselves and those we may infect.

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Coda: context matters...and changes

As I was finalizing this post, this sad example underlined the importance of context -- and how it changes. Anthony Fauci is now being criticized (by the White House!) for his statement back on April 3:  "…There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask..."

In context, he also said (emphasis added):  "...Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. ...when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill. ... It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it." At the time, it was not foolish at all. The times changed, and Fauci's statements changed with the context. 

Pay attention to the situation. Don't be a Covidiot!


[Update 4/18/21:] The Swiss cheese model

A very simple metaphorical model for dealing with the fog, in the spirit outlined here, is the Swiss Cheese Respiratory Pandemic Defense, as nicely explained in the NY Times with the image above.

This illustrates the basic principle that if the probability of each layer of defense (Dn) failing is Pn, then the probability of ten layers of defense (D1, D2, D3, ...D10) failing is P1 x P2 x P3 ... x P10. If each is so poor it fails one half of the time, each P is .5, and the combination of all ten will fail with a probability of .5 to the 10th power. That reduces it to .00098, or 0.098% -- about one in one thousand times. Every layer of cheese has a multiplier effect, even if it has lots of holes!

[Update 7/25/21:] Not out of the woods yet!

These two reports in the NY Times underline the need for continuing situational awareness, and guidance on that:

• ‘Not Out of the Woods’: C.D.C. Issues Warning to the Unvaccinated
• Should Vaccinated People Start Wearing Masks Again?

[Update 7/30/21:] Being smart requires better data and guidance

It’s situational awareness, stupid! Excellent NYT essay, If We Must Wear Masks Again, We Need a SmartApproach, underlines the need for better data and guidance to enable situational awareness -- and that the situation is constantly evolving.

All levels of government and institutions need to cooperate to teach each of us how to understand and apply the data and the science as it evolves -- to manage our own OODA loops. That means day by day, zipcode by zipcode, site by site, personal condition by personal condition. The CDC should teach us that its guidance is always contingent on the situation, and thus will change. 

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See this related post: 
The Pandemic Reminds Us "Everything is Deeply Intertwingled" – We Need Better Logics for That

The Pandemic Reminds Us "Everything is Deeply Intertwingled" – We Need Better Logics for That

A bat catches a cold in Wuhan, and weeks later the whole world coughs. America and China battle a trade war, and then there is a shortage of PPE and ventilator parts from China.  Poor neighborhoods suffer high death rates because of poor health, but even celebrities and heads of state go into ICUs.  The economy craters, and we argue over relief to businesses versus workers based on which is more disposed to misuse what they might be given.  Health officials say flatten the curve, financiers say reopen, and corporations say they don’t dare reopen without testing.  The Federal government is too polarized to fix much of anything, and has forgotten their real job of governing by consensus.  

Modern technologies of global connection -- both physical and virtual -- make the pandemic emerge in weeks instead of years, and make all the butterfly effects far more complex.  That is our new curse, but also our new blessing.  We have global travel and supply chains, global communications and media networks -- a global village composed of local villages.  Techies moved fast and broke society, and now discourse seems too polarized to fix it.

All of these effects are driven by market forces -- however regulated.  Marketplaces of goods and services and marketplaces of ideas.  These marketplaces are driven by complex interplays of top-down structure and bottom-up emergence from billions of actors --and systems of actors.  

Technology has made these forces more dynamic and turbulent, but technology can enable smarter and better-regulated marketplaces -- if we re-focus.  We cannot undo this onrushing dynamic -- we need to get smarter about how we use technology to help us go forward.

The pandemic may be the kick in the ass we need to reform society over a wide range of domains and levels.  Seeing the commonalities can help us capture a new synergy.  If rise to that challenge, the future will be bright. If we fail it will be dark.  Many see that, but few focus on the root causes. 

Peter Drucker said “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Two new logics can help us correct the failures of our current logics.

Ever-growing intertwingularity

The problem we now face all too urgently is that our lives are all deeply intertwingled, but we fall back to simplistic “fast” thinking with rigid categories and institutions.  Some leaders rise to the challenge and others flail, and we argue over who does which.  The regulation of our marketplace of ideas that “mediates consent” about facts has broken down, as has our social/economic marketplace.  These problems are difficult and complex – but we can get smarter about solving them – the first order and second order effects.  (To get a sense of the range of these issues, see this briefing by Tony O’Driscoll [since adapted for publication] and this McKinsey report. To see how this has reopened old questions, and may provide an opening for new thinking, see this NY Times report on the shifting issues for the 2020 election.)

 

The symbolic circle of the Tao reminds us of that truth is never entirely black or white, but shades of gray that depend on the light we view it in and the perspective we view it from.  Just how much is subject to argument, discovery, and rediscovery, as reality emerges.  This is age-old, but it is more urgent than ever that we come to grips with it.  2020 will mark a turning point in human history.

For decades our world and our markets have been increasingly stressed, even as we seemed to be progressing.  Tensions of nationality, race, ideology, religion, economics, technology, and governance are raging.  “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold /…The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”  It is now urgent that we re-center more wisely on our better convictions.

The Enlightenment has run aground because those who saw the light and had the benefits did not pay enough attention to sharing that.  Liberals turned away from “the deplorables” instead of caring for and raising them up.  Capitalists extracted short-term profits and enriched themselves with stock buybacks -- exploiting workers instead of empowering them.  Factions and political parties fought zero-sum struggles to control the existing pie instead of engaging in win-win cooperation to create and share a larger pie.

The Chinese ideograph for crisis is composed from the characters for danger plus opportunity.  Many retreat in fear of the danger and seek to throw blame and erect walls, but wiser heads look to the opportunity.  Most see opportunity in narrow domains, but some look to the big picture.  We now face an urgent and historic opportunity to refocus on a more enlightened and productive kind of cooperation across the full range of issues.

Those who see and work on these problems in particular domains of concern and expertise can unite in spirit and vision with those in other domains.  We can forge a new Age of Enlightenment – a Reformation of The Enlightenment.  An awakening of interconnection and cooperative spirit is emerging.  Our challenge is to synergize it.  Some elements:

• Economic and health insecurity for some leads to insecurity for all.  A safety net is needed.
• Market systems need slack to respond to black swan events.  “Just-in-time” and “lean” are efficient only when not overstressed.  Global supply chains need resilience and redundancy. Too much slack and safety drain our wealth and will, but too little lead to disaster.
• Moving fast and breaking things can break things that cannot be fixed.  Experience can blind us, but inexperience can kill.
• Power among local, state, national, and global government must be properly balanced and adaptable to stress.  Power and wealth must be shared fairly among people, factions, and nations, or those left wanting will throw rocks at the crystal palace.  The resurgence of nationalism, factionalism, and the crisis of disinformation are symptoms of perceived unfairness.  Government that is too small is just as bad as too big.

Our modern, high-tech world is far too complex for purely top-down or bottom-up management and governance -- we need a smart and adaptive blend. That requires openness, transparency, trust, and fairness, so even when there is disagreement, there is a common sense of reasonableness and good spirit.

New Logics for Intertwingularity

My recent work has focused on two new ways to deal better with this growing complexity.  These new logics that do not just exhort people to be better and wiser, but better align interests so that virtue is rewarded. 

One relates to failures of our marketplace of ideas – especially our social media and other collaborative systems.  Computer-augmented human collaboration first emerged in the 1960s, and was used for disaster preparedness (natural and nuclear).  It progressed slowly until the Web made it far more powerful and accessible to consumers, but we failed to direct those social media systems to serve us well.  Struggling to find a business model, they hit on advertising. We now recognize that to be “the original sin of the Internet” because it misdirects our platforms to serve advertisers and not users.  Algorithms can help augment human intelligence to make us smarter collectively -- instead of making us stupider, as social media now do.  Systems that elucidate nuance, context, and perspective can empower us to draw out and augment the wisdom of crowds (as explained in detail on this blog) to deal more smartly with our deeply intertwingled world.  That could drive a new Age of Enlightenment in which technology augments the marketplace of ideas in the ways that we have always relied on to mediate consent – an emergent mix of top-down guidance and bottom-up emergence that can lead to new, yet natural, forms of digital democracy.

The other relates to failures of our economic marketplace – how we can shift from the short-term. zero-sum logic of extractive mass-market capitalism to more long-term, win-win forms of market cooperation.  That can restore the emergent, distributed, and human logic of traditional markets that Adam Smith saw as socially beneficial -- before modern mass-marketing alienated producers from consumers and lost sight of broader human values.  Our digital economy now enables new ways to shift from fighting over a current pie to cooperating to co-create a larger pie -- and to share it fairly.  That logic can empower a reformation of market capitalism from within that could actually be more profitable, and thus self-motivating.  We can apply the power of computer-mediated marketplaces to let businesses and consumers negotiate at a human level -- about the values they care about, how to co-create that value, and how to share in the benefits.  We have begun to think in terms of customer journeys, but have been trying to fit customers into segments or personas. Instead, we need to design for segments of one that are custom-fit to each customer, to build relationships with each customer on human terms.

These two logics are interrelated: a flawed economic logic for consumer platform services has been built on advertising revenue (“the Internet’s original sin”). That has warped incentives to favor engagement with junk content that sells ads, rather then the value to users of quality content. An improved logic for value will create incentives for our platforms to facilitate a logic for a better marketplace of ideas.

The brief descriptions of these new logics may sound like just more exhortations, but the posts that they link to provide details of operational mechanisms -- and evidence that their elements have proven effective.  These new combinations of elements can quickly become second nature, because they draw on and re-channel natural behaviors that promise to make them highly self-reinforcing.

Many allied visions for better logics of emergence are finding new relevance in this era of crisis.  We have only to join together and rise to the occasion.  We say that “we are all in this together” – we need to open our minds to really think that way, and to work with new logics and “choice architectures” that make that natural.  With better logics, our instinctive behaviors can once again synergize to flow in increasingly enlightened ways.

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For more about the new logic for the marketplace of ideas (and intertwingularity in general), see this list of selected items on the SmartlyIntertwingled.com blog.

For more about the new logic for the economic marketplace, see this list of selected items on the FairPayZone.com blog.